Most Ethiopians believe that intellectual disability is a curse from God. They wrongly perceived that the children are born with intellectual disabilities and other physical disabilities to reveal God's punishment on the parents for their wrongdoing.
This is a totally myth, and the scientific explanation clearly defines it. For instance, Down syndrome is a chromosomal condition which occurs because of an extra copy of a chromosome. It is totally a genetic disorder. A child born with an extra copy of the chromosome will be exposed to genetic disorder. Therefore, his/her different organ systems might be affected. For example, the heart and endocrine system will be affected. In addition to this, they will face concerns with ear, nose, and throat conditions.
Moreover, children born with Down syndrome might have mild to moderate intellectual disability.
In Ethiopia, both in rural and urban areas, parents tend to hide their intellectual disabled children, fearing the society's isolation and bad feelings due to their child. It is obvious that still there are numerous children hiding in homes. Parents hide their child from society until their adult age. Parents chain their child inside a closed door. Most of the parents do not know how to manage and interact with children born with intellectual disabilities. This scenario is another traumatic situation that might lead the intellectual disability child towards a more complicated psychosocial problem.
At the same time, religious fathers also associated such issues with the devil and try to take various measures to free them.
Currently, persons with intellectual disabilities are facing different challenges in Ethiopia due to various reasons. They face difficulties of acquiring quality education, effective healthcare services, among others due to the lack of implementable and inclusive policy framework.
Widespread negative attitudes, stigma and discrimination, and minor sentiments among the public are still the major challenges that obstruct children with intellectual disability not to become more competitive in Ethiopia. If someone has a child with intellectual disability, it is not the child only that will be suffering. The family will undergoes a lot of economic, social, cultural, among others challenges.
Keeping this in mind, it is important to undertake multi-sectorial advocacy efforts towards creating a better awareness among the public and ease children life born with intellectual disability.
Fikir Ethiopia National Association on Intellectual Disabilities is among the leading associations that have been working in the area through supporting the needy and mobilizing the society to strive for a better future that accommodates persons with intellectual disabilities in the country.
The association was established with children with intellectual disabilities' parents and other volunteer Ethiopians before 30 years in 1994. Currently, the association finalizes preparations to mark its 30th anniversary with various events in the coming weeks. Apart from marking its anniversary, the association plans to promote its noble activities through the participation of more Ethiopians across its journey. Regarding this, expanding the association's branches and embracing more persons with intellectual disabilities sought to be its major objective.
Fikir Ethiopia National Association on Intellectual Disabilities President, Mihret Nigusie told The Ethiopian Herald that there are a lot of work still needs to be done regarding persons with intellectual disabilities in Ethiopia.
According to her, the association was founded aimed at curbing the physical and psychosocial trauma of persons with intellectual disabilities and it has been doing its level best through countering all odds.
Accordingly, children born with intellectual disabilities were subjected to various forms of labor, sexual harassment, rape, discrimination and isolation. Following this, in order to solve these problems and to create a safe place for children with intellectual disabilities, the association closely works with the government, pertinent stakeholders, and the general public. To realize this, promoting awareness creation regarding intellectual disabilities is expected to bring about a tangible change.
"Intellectual disability is a lack of intellectual maturity and competence, as well as a lack of competence in social and personal activities. Limitation of mental development occurs when the functions of the mind are not as appropriate or lack of competence and maturity. In terms of personal achievement, there are things that a person is expected to do starting from birth. For example, crying at birth, then sitting up, and then nursing. So, when these things are missing, it can be said that it is a limitation of intellectual development," she said.
"In the last 30 years, the association has been doing a lot of work especially in bringing out children with intellectual disabilities and making them have better life activities. However, it still has many unsolved problems. One of the problems of the association is the lack of clear understanding among the public regarding intellectual disabilities. There are various discriminations and exclusions that happen to the members of the association. The low level of awareness among the community about intellectual disabilities has prevented children with intellectual disabilities from benefiting equally from education, health, work and various social and economic issues."
On the other hand, there are obstacles preventing the association from operating at its full potential. There is a lack of finance and experts so that the members of the association might face challenges to do the things they want to do by travelling far in the rural areas. In these areas, the association was not accessible and could not take out many children with intellectual disabilities who were locked up at home.
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Currently, the association also works on reproductive health and other health-related issues to ensure that children with intellectual disabilities can take care of themselves.
Moreover, providing Early Intervention Care (EIC) and various therapy services; including occupational therapy, behavioral therapy, physiotherapy, speech and language therapy for children with intellectual disability is important to create a better future to them.
What is more, Fiker Ethiopia National Association on Intellectual Disabilities has now expanded its branches out of Addis Ababa in different parts of the country to address the problems that children born with intellectual disabilities are facing.
In sum, the active participation of concerned bodies including the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, higher education institutions as well as other governmental and non-governmental organizations is important to facilitate the necessary preconditions for children born with intellectual disability.
